Tinker, Golfer, Doctor, Trill
by StarSword-C
Summary: Written for Unofficial Literary Challenge #5: "Back from the Dead?" on the Star Trek Online forums. With the USS Bajor scheduled to head for the Delta Quadrant to fight the Vaadwaur, science chief Commander Birail Riyannis takes a layover at Deep Space 9 as an opportunity for her zhian'tara.


**Tinker, Golfer, Doctor, Trill**

Father. Musician. Sister. Pro golfer. Enlisted man. Wife. Scientist. Commissioned officer. Doctor. Riyannis had been many, many things in a lifetime spanning three centuries and five hosts.

Birail Izer could remember many of them. Not all. Being a joined Trill meant you had the prior hosts' memories in the same way a normal humanoid had their own. Sometimes it was clear as day, sometimes you couldn't remember at all, sometimes it came back hazy.

But Riyannis remembered everything. Riyannis _always_ remembered everything.

Of course, functionally there _was_ no Riyannis or Birail Izer. They were one person, Birail Riyannis. But that didn't stop the occasional weird situation where she felt déjà vu for things that had happened before her grandparents were born. Compared to working out those intricacies in your daily life, computing a Dho-Nha geometry curve in real time was comparatively straightforward. Figures didn't have feelings attached to them, apart from the frustration with a particularly difficult _n_-dimensional mechanics variation Biri was working on when the USS _Bajor_ pulled into Deep Space 9 for a week-long layover between patrols. It wasn't for work, fortunately: she'd finished all the heavy stuff from the excavation on Orvis II earlier in the day, and the captain had handed the site off to a team from the Federation Science Council—and went on the extranet looking for a recent paper to peer-review to kill time until her shift was over.

Sudden inspiration struck and she scribbled out an affine transformation onto her PADD, then noticed a mistake, swore, erased half a page of work, and redid the numbers. _Got it that time. Ha ha, you idiots. Rule number one, always remember to double-check your unit conversions. Now, let's see what we can do with this bastardization of the Ostrowski-Hadamard gap theorem…_

She nearly jumped out of her skin when the ship jolted and the captain's voice came through the intercom speakers. Eleya's rough contralto voice said, "Attention all hands. This is the captain speaking. We've just docked at Deep Space 9 and will be opening the airlock to allow shore leave debarkation in five minutes. Senior staff, please remain aboard for a briefing in ten minutes."

Biri shook off the jitters, guessing from the rough docking that someone other than Lieutenant Park was manning conn, and dropped the PADD on her desk.

* * *

"What's up, El?" Biri asked as she sat down in the wardroom aft of the bridge.

"We're getting reassed. Again," Eleya replied.

"You mean they're letting us out of exile?" Biri asked hopefully. Orvis II notwithstanding, there wasn't a whole hell of a lot left unexplored this far into civilized space.

"Not really," Tess answered, sitting across the table from the Trill. "Just changing it. Instead of being stuck at DS9 they're sending us to the Delta Quadrant as part of a battle group to reinforce Vice Admiral Reynolds. They're putting us with Tuvok and _Voyager_."

"Seems the Vaadwaur are proving tougher nuts to crack than Command expected," Gaarra added from Eleya's right. "Reynolds requested several heavy capitals and support units, at least six attack wings' worth, and with the Terrans' operation on this side out of commission there's no pressing need for us in Beta Ursae any more."

"Who else is going?" Tess asked as Warragul started rapidly scribbling something on his PADD.

Eleya tapped something on her desk console and the wall screen flicked to an order of battle. "Two other _Galaxy_-class starships, Diego O'Shannon's _Coridan_ and the _Abe Lincoln_ under Vagret Ldone—"

"They got it fixed?" Tess interrupted. "Thought that Lethean fellow Brokosh tore it a new one at Utopia Planitia."

"Wasn't any serious structural damage, apparently; just the fighter bay needed redoing. There's also one _Odyssey_-class and one _Jupiter_-class, the _Picard_ and the _San Jose_, and about a hundred other ships for escort and discretionary. Uh, let's see, what else?" she asked, peering at her screen. "We've got about nine days layover while DS9 refits our multipurpose decks into troop quarters and materiel storage, then we're supposed to transwarp to Andoria to meet the rest of the fleet and pick up the 103rd Expeditionary Force."

Gaarra whistled. "Okay, gotta get Logistics and Food Service ready to handle ten thousand jarheads. Fun times," he added sarcastically.

"And tanks," Biri added. "Don't forget the tanks. Well, I guess that changes _my_ schedule."

"How so?"

"Well, I had my _zhian'tara_ scheduled for the layover after this one but it doesn't sound like we'll be back in the Alpha Quadrant for a while."

"I'm sorry, your what?" Eleya asked.

"It's a rite joined Trills like me perform once a host. We cause the personalities of past hosts to manifest so we can talk to them."

"'Manifest' how?" Warragul queried, looking up from his PADD.

"We get a Guardian—that's an unjoined Trill telepath, cares for the symbiotes in their natural state—to transfer the residual personality left in the little guy"—she tapped the pouch under her breastbone—"to a temporary host. I had Joran Abrel scheduled to meet us in a month and a half, but that's easily a two-week trip by commercial transport. El, I was _talking_," she said as the Bajoran started furiously writing on her PADD.

"Yeah, I was checking something. They opened the transwarp conduit at Trill to the general public last week."

"Oh."

* * *

Joran Abrel was older than Biri had expected, easily a hundred years old if he was a day. Completely bald, wrinkles like nobody's business, but the eyes. Those beady dark eyes pierced through her.

"We will begin the Rite of Emergence shortly," he said in a kindly tone. "Doctor Wirrpanda, you will be hosting Doctor Chiga Rakalyan, the first host of Riyannis."

"How many times have you done this?" the human asked warily. "And have you done it on non-Trill?"

Abrel smiled. "I honestly stopped counting at least fifty years ago. But I conducted the _zhian'tara_ for Jadzia Dax as well as her successor Ezri Dax. The only hiccup was when I put Curzon in Odo."

"Why? What happened?" Eleya asked.

"Curzon's … soul, for lack of a better term in Federation Standard, fused with Odo until he agreed to be removed."

"No chance of that happening here, right?" Warragul checked.

"Not unless you're really a changeling and haven't told anyone," Biri said, deadpan.

"No! How'd you know?" The doctor grinned and the lovebirds cracked up, with Eleya leaning on the slightly taller Gaarra.

"Anyway, they added a note to the manual not to use them in the _zhian'tara_ after that."

"There's a manual?" Tess commented.

"I hate to interrupt," Abrel murmured, "but could we—"

"Sorry," Biri apologized, then cleared her throat. "Yes, let's go." The other members of the group filed out of the room, leaving only human, joined Trill, and Guardian.

The process took only a few seconds but Biri felt a sudden intangible _absence_. It wasn't like not being able to remember, it was as if the memory had never been there in the first place. Biri remembered remembering but it was like looking at somebody else's holoimage.

"Whoa," Warragul said, his South Australian accent suddenly vanishing. "This is so weird."

"What is?"

"Being in a man's body, Biri. Pirka, Borryn, and Devon all used women for me." He grabbed his collar and looked down the shirt, then whistled. "Some muscles on this guy. Must work out. Hey," s/he asked suddenly, "did they find a cure for Adaxas Syndrome yet?"

"You know, I do kinda remember a short attention span," Biri commented.

"Do you also remember hyper-focusing when you're working on a problem?"

Biri paused. "Now that you mention it…"

* * *

"No, definitely need an eight-iron for that shot," Gaarra told her as they played a round on Holodeck Two. The captain's boyfriend was currently hosting Borryn Forek, host number two.

"You're the pro." Biri shrugged and traded in the five-iron, stepped up to the ball, steadied herself, and swung, and with a metallic _whop_ forty-two grams of (holographic) plastic rose into the sky.

"Beautiful! Perfect!" Borryn congratulated her.

"So how did you get into golf, anyway?"

"Well, it wasn't that long after first contact with the Federation, maybe twenty years. My parents were in the FST diplomatic delegation to Earth, and I got bored one day after school, started exploring Paris, and signed up for golf lessons pretty much for kicks. Not needing money with the humans has its advantages."

Biri remembered the rest as she picked up her bag. Borryn had quickly proven a natural, won his first British Open by the time he was 18, then pulled a grand slam, all four Earth majors, at the tender age of 23. "You were practically the whole reason golf became big on Trill, weren't you?"

"I don't like to boast," he demurred as they got into the cart and trundled downhill to the green. "But yeah, I had a hand in that."

"That's an understatement—you used the winnings from that year as seed money for the Shera Meadows course in Leran Manev, for crying out loud. _And_ you were the first winner of the Trill Open six years running."

"Honestly there wasn't a whole hell of a lot of competition at the time; the first Open was pretty much just me and that Vulcan, T'Sora. Hard one to beat—she could send a ball way further than I could."

"Heavyworlder," Biri explained. "Vulcan's got half-again the gravity. So how come Pirka and I play but Devon didn't?"

"Never thought about it. I suggested he try it when he did his _zhian'tara_, but I guess being career Starfleet kept him too busy."

"I manage it."

"They didn't have holodecks then."

"Point."

* * *

"By the forty hosts of Gaunt, what is _with_ this uniform?" the fire-haired Bajoran complained. "And what the hell rate am I supposed to be?"

"Uh, the body you're in is an officer. My captain, actually."

"Great," Devon Yarvo, a.k.a. Master Chief Transporter Officer Devon Riyannis, complained. "Figures you'd stick me in a zero."

"Hey, watch it. She's not your average CO—she came up from the ranks."

Devon looked impressed. "Hey, Guardian, get me a mirror," he ordered in a commanding tone. Abrel wordlessly passed him a hand mirror and he perused Eleya's features critically. "Younger than I expected. Nasty scar. A mustang, you said?"

"She was an NCO in the Bajoran Militia."

"Good girl. Always said you can't command a man until you've walked a klick in his shoes. Fraggin' high-and-mighty Academy meat, come out thinkin' they know every damn thing." He paused and glanced at Biri, who raised an eyebrow at him. "No offense."

"None taken. You're half the reason I joined Starfleet anyway, despite Dad." Jonek Izer's first wife, Biri's mother Pallas, had served, too, a gunner's mate killed at Second Chin'toka aboard the USS _Shanghai_. Jonek never forgave the service for it.

"What was the other half?"

"My field docent was Rear Admiral Dax."

"Little Jadzia made admiral?" he asked hopefully.

"No, _Ezri_ Dax. Jadzia was KIA in '74."

He looked crestfallen. "Always the good ones who die young," he grumbled. "Knew her when she was a shiny new ensign, right before I retired. Smart girl, paid attention when her noncoms told her something." He gave Biri a look in the eye with a severe expression on his face. "Hope you do, sir."

"Absolutely, Master Chief."

"Good. Always gotta keep a finger on the pulse of the rank-and-file." He stepped over to a wall screen and started tapping some commands. "Gaunt's hosts," he said in awe.

"What?"

"A _Galaxy_-class starship. I've never been aboard one before. Beautiful ship, beautiful. Your captain's very proud of her."

"I know. I love this ship, too. Wanted to serve on one ever since I first looked at joining Starfleet."

"So did I, but they'd only just launched the first series when I hit mandatory retirement. And then I had that stroke two years later and that was the end of it." He reached out and tapped Biri's pouch. "Had a good run with the little guy but things happen."

"Your grandson's heading into the Delta Quadrant with us," Biri told him. "He was Class of '86, now first officer on the _Wolf 359_."

Devon smiled. "Couldn't be prouder."

* * *

Unlike the other three hosts, all of whom had died before Birail Izer was born, Biri had actually met Pirka Riyannis briefly over a decade ago, right before the transference, but hadn't had a chance to talk with her on account of she was out cold at the time after being fatally injured in an aircar accident. Symbiosis Commission grads were put on a waiting list for the next symbiote and it had happened to be Riyannis.

That had been hard, watching them remove the little guy from the pouch of the motionless, clinically dead Pirka. And then the shock, a wave of new memories unfolding in Biri's mind like a blooming flower. The experience always changed the host: no matter how much the Symbiosis Commission prepared you to separate your own memories from the symbiote's, you always became a little different. Biri had picked up golf and joined Starfleet, where she'd never considered either before.

Pirka Saroyn sat in a chair in Tess's body, improvising on a bass fife Biri had replicated for her. She'd been fairly well-known on the Trill planetary internet as a folk musician, though she was only ever a part-timer who did it for fun. Or at least she was trying to improvise and apparently failing. "I don't get it. Doesn't sound right no matter what I do."

"Well, you _are_ in an Andorian."

Pirka frowned. "The antennae?"

"Probably. They've got senses we Trill don't—they can pick up EM fields and a much wider range of audio frequencies."

"Well, this isn't working," she grumbled, laying down the fife. "And this body doesn't have the muscle memory anyway. But I hate the silence. Always felt it needed to be filled with something, why I started playing."

Biri's face twisted. "Computer, play Lieutenant Korekh's album for me."

The sounds of low-pitched strings started coming from the intercom speakers, a jaunty, upbeat tune that Pirka started tapping a foot to almost immediately, closing her eyes in pleasure as Tess' antennae twitched. "Who is that and what is he playing? Doesn't sound like a yishar or a cello."

"That's our security chief, Dul'krah, Clan Korekh. He's playing one of his species' native stringed instruments."

"I _like_ it. Wait, I know this one. It's 'Tirk's Lover' by Korin Sera. How'd he—"

"It's his hobby. He converts other species' songs to play on his vodchakh."

Pirka's eyes widened and she whistled, impressed. "You work with some interesting people, Biri."

They sat there listening for a while and the song ended and a new one began. This one Biri had heard the big Pe'khdar play in person, Tor Jolan's Fourth, a classical Bajoran tune. Presently Biri asked if she regretted anything. "About what?" Pirka replied, standing and giving her fife a few experimental toots, then swearing. "Nope, still not working."

"About having to move on like that, no preparation, no nothing."

"Devon was in the same boat—you don't see _him_ complaining. Yeah, okay, I wish I'd been able to see my daughters graduate and so forth, but at least I got to actually be around when they were growing up, unlike the Chief. Thirty years in Starfleet and what'd he get for it? Nice retirement party and an empty house on account of two wives taking the kids."

Biri frowned. "Are you saying I should quit?"

"No! Not if you enjoy what you're doing, anyway," the older woman amended. "I'm saying that you've chosen a lifestyle and you'll have to make sacrifices, and and I don't mean dying alone and forgotten on some rock nobody's ever heard of. You meet somebody, you and they will have a choice to make. Long-distance relationships are hard. Trust me, I know."

"Anything else you think I should know?" Biri queried, a little defensively.

"Yeah." Pirka tossed her the fife and she caught it. "You make a G-sharp by pressing the third button down the tube."

* * *

"DS9 Control," Ensign Esplin said into her mic, "this is USS _Bajor_, requesting permission to launch."

"Confirmed, USS _Bajor_," Jim Kurland's voice answered, "you are cleared to launch. Good luck in the Delta Quadrant, and may the Prophets go with you."

"And with you," Eleya returned. "Lieutenant Park, you may proceed."

"Conn, aye," the human confirmed.

As he proceeded with detaching the ship from DS9, Biri sat quietly in her seat reading over an archaeology paper. She felt someone put a hand on her shoulder. "Hey."

"Hey, El."

"You're awful quiet today. Lot to think about?"

"Mm-hm."

"But you're okay?"

Biri clicked a pair of icons and sent the paper to her quarters' console. "Yeah. And hey, maybe we'll get to do some actual science in the DQ in spite of ourselves." Eleya shifted slightly. "No, it's all right. I knew what I was signing up for."

"You know you can talk to me, right? Anytime, anywhere."

"I know. If you need me I'll be in my quarters."

As the _Bajor_ drove for the transwarp conduit Biri left the bridge and went down seven decks. "Computer, privacy mode." She started to try and work on the paper, but couldn't focus and stopped. She reached for a cabinet over the console, took Pirka's fife, and put it to her lips.


End file.
